The firing of David Frum from his position as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute has provoked such a storm of bloviation from pundits, bloggers, and Washington score-keepers that scientists are now warning the amount of hot air generated could exacerbate global warming. Frum has been taken up by the liberal media as a hero and alleged victim of right-wing "dogmatism" and "extremism," a lone reasonable "moderate" supposedly purged from his post because he urged conservatives to compromise on Obamacare. Frum is battling "rude, reckless extremism," the punditi pontificated: this is surely "the Republican right’s Waterloo," said one, hopefully, echoing Frum.

The Frum-ster was fired, not because he didn’t do a lick of work for AEI, refused to come into the office, and neglected to write for their blog – as Charles Murray pointed out – but due to the fact that he bravely dared to speak out against "lockstep Republican opposition to the health-care bill [that] sacrificed conservative policy goals at the altar of short-term electoral incentives." David Frum, martyr to high principle – the Republican "principle" of (partially) socialized healthcare – yeah, that‘s the ticket!

Isn’t it passing strange that none of these "liberals," these fighters against Republican/tea partier "extremism" and "dogmatism, deigned to mention that their hero has been on the other side of the docket in the conservative purge trials, most famously for his denunciation of anti-interventionist conservatives who opposed the invasion of Iraq? Perhaps they didn’t know about it, although that’s unlikely – but that’s what I’m here for, now isn’t it?

His screed, published in National Review and entitled, with characteristic venom, "Unpatriotic Conservatives," accused Bob Novak and Pat Buchanan, among a number of other conservatives and libertarians (including this writer) of waging a "war against America," and of making "common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies."

It was the neoconservative equivalent of the Moscow Trials, and Frum was the neocons’ Vyshinsky, as I pointed out at the time. Instead of engaging the –now vindicated – views of the antiwar right, Frum simply vomited up every epithet he ever knew: traitor, fifth columnist, jihadist, etc. ad nauseam. It was such a disgusting display of vindictive name-calling that the former publisher of National Review, Neal Freeman, took to the pages of the American Spectator to rebut Frum’s disgraceful performance:

"On each and every point Novak had been right and his opponents had been wrong. In opinion journalism, you would hope that the quality of opinion would count for something. But in those poisonous days, truth was no defense. ‘Unpatriotic.’ It was the cruelest cut you could inflict on a conservative of a certain age. When I put down my copy of NR, I felt a genuinely new sensation. For the first time in my long association with the magazine, I was ashamed."

Not Frum, however, either then or now, and not the editors of National Review, who, to this day, maintain they were right not only in publishing Frum’s loathsome jeremiad – which grotesquely accused conservative opponents of the war, including the Jewish-born Novak, of "anti-Semitism," as well as sedition – but in supporting the war to the hilt. Frum and his fellow neocons had been agitating for war with Iraq for a decade or so, and if the success of their holy crusade resulted in the ruination of the American position in the Middle East, and the death of tens of thousands, well then no matter, as long as the neocon lust for perpetual war was satiated with a good bloodbath.

This kind of intransigence – maintained long after the verdict has been passed on the Iraq war as an unmitigated disaster – doesn’t jibe with Frum’s new image as a "moderate," which clues us in as to why the liberals who hail him don’t mention it, and the conservatives who now hate him don’t refer to it. The former because their opposition to "Bush’s wars" has dwindled to nothing as Obama dons his armor and charges off to fight the same battles, the latter because they were wrong, too, and would rather not remind us of that uncomfortable fact.

The lesson to be learned from all this is twofold: first of all, the liberals who now lionize the "brave" Frum-ster care only about domestic politics: i.e. issues like healthcare "reform," which satisfy their craving for more government control over our lives. That’s why they’re silent in the face of Obama’s war crimes, even as they screeched for Bush’s impeachment on the same grounds for eight long years.

As for the conservatives, the lesson here is essential and it’s staring them in the face. If they can’t see it quite yet, that’s due to their peculiar ideological blindness when it comes to the question of war and peace. They declaim against Obamacare as "socialism" and decry the advance of Washington’s long shadow over all things great and small, and yet they object not at all to the sort of military socialism that has infected conservative consciousness since the dawn of the cold war.

It was the founder of National Review magazine, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who, at the beginning of the cold war, announced that it would be necessary to give up the conservative dream of limited government in order to carry out a global war against Communism. Writing in 1952, shortly before the founding of NR, Buckley averred that the prosecution of the cold war would require that the US maintain "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington–even with Truman at the reins of it all." Forget about limited government, he advised conservatives, because:

"We have got to accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."

Today, that totalitarian bureaucracy goes by the name "Homeland Security," among others, and the Enemy is no longer communism but "terrorism" and its alleged supporters, and the proscription against calling for a real reduction in the power and scope of Big Government remains, at least as far as the David Frums of this world are concerned. Of course Frum wants the Republicans to cave on healthcare, and stop talking about "extremist" ideas like restoring the gold standard (which would eliminate the power of government to impose hidden taxes via inflation), since all he and his fellow neocons care about is war, and more war. In his book, An End to Evil, he and co-author Richard Perle advocated invading virtually every Muslim country on earth, and then some: oh, and we also must be prepared to give up our civil liberties, ditch the Constitution, and hand over power to the National Security State, which alone can protect us. This is all perfectly consistent with neoconservative ideology, which has always stood for Big Government, albeit a slightly less extravagant version than is called for by the Obama-crats, and the reason for this is simple.

In order to maintain an empire abroad – the issue that is really dear to neocon hearts — we must maintain our bloated Leviathan on the home front: the two go hand in hand. That’s what the "Big Government conservatism" pushed by such neocon outlets as the Weekly Standard was all about: after all, how can we invade every country in the Middle East and impose "democracy" at gunpoint if the federal government is starved for funds and cut back to its proper size?

The tea partiers who cavil that the GOP and the official conservative movement are RINOs and sellouts have no one to blame but themselves and their own inability to see the vital connection between domestic and foreign policy. You can’t fight a war to "democratize" the Middle East without plenty of tax dollars to play around with, nor can you pose as the guardian of order and even liberty in the world without denying your own citizenry the right to enjoy the fruits of their labors.You can’t build an empire on which the sun never sets except on the foundations of a federal government that has the power to plunder its citizens and redistribute American wealth throughout the world. Frum and the neocons love Big Government, because their fondest desire is to increase the geographic spread and influence of that government all around the world, with a network of bases, colonies, protectorates, and economic dependents all financed by the downtrodden and fast disappearing American middle classes, who are being handed the bill.

Which is why the friends of liberty and peace can have but one response to the purging of David Frum, consisting of three words; hip hip hoo-ray! He’s being given a dose of his own medicine, and he doesn’t like it one bit. Tough. Conservatives are slowly but surely waking from their long slumber, and when they finally get their eyes wide open they will see how they’ve been betrayed, and by whom.

Frum can dish out, but he sure can’t take it. His dismissal from his well-paid position at AEI is proof positive that the concept of "karma" – that we get back what we put out – is fully operational, and there’s some justice in this world, after all.

Is Justin Raimondo speaking my language, or has my ear turned Libertarian..?? Whatever the cause, for me it's Hip….Hip…;.HOO-RAH for the Frum sacking and Justin's fine presentation and framing of this glad tiding.. Though I'm sure some would say that if we don't support Frum, we are not Patriots, I will say any termination the divided loyalties gang can walk away from is a good one for them.. Too bad that their hundreds of thousands of victims will never walk this earth again.. Maybe they should pay MORE…!!!

NEOCON's have never received criticism! They attack those who dare to criticize them with false indignation, arrogance and hubris.. An analysis of how taxes are collected and spent. When Reagoon became president the number of lobbyists in D.C. was about 500. The number of lobbyists increase is attibuted to Reagoon deficit, there are 45,000 lobbyist now after the Federal deficit spending proceeds doled out to the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS, for the Pentagon's[DHS included]. The interest and principle being paid for by the individual, as Reagoon almost eliminated corporate taxes while they received $trillions. from the USG, WELFARE FOR THE CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS. This purpose of the Pentagon is to provide protection, worldwide, for the CORPORATIONS. The final analysis is that the USG is running a MAFIOSO protection racket, extorting taxes from Americans for the protection of the CORPORATIONS. As for me I'm an Libertarian Socialist as inspired by Noam Chomsky. IT'S NOT THE ENTITLEMENT's stupids it's the USG MAFIOSO protection racket of the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX that is bankrupting America because of the deficit spending used to finance the NWO, New World Order being inforced by the Pentagon's.

I'm not surprised that lefty leadership would rush to Frum's defense. The 'leadership' of the left is mostly totally coopted or extremely stupid. Ok, some, like Chomsky, are only partially coopted. The guy teaches at MIT, people, get a clue!!! He's no blazing radical. The fact that he would be considered to be somehow the iconic radical gives a pretty good idea of how weak the left has become.

But what's really crazy about the left is that, even though for decade after decade now, the Left has utterly FAILED on almost all important issues, with the possible exception of gay rights (and even there the left is tottering on the edge of total failure), there has been no realization that we NEED NEW LEADERS.

One would think that would be blazingly obvious to all. When a movement has been utterly crushed, to the point of having zero political relevance, to the point where its achievements are being rolled back (civil rights? check out the prisons lately? social security and medicare? Notice who is going to get the budget slash? we are even seeing a return to off shore drilling and nuclear energy plants!!! One would have thought that at least the environmentalist achievements were safe, but no …), that some folks would kinda notice that angry new leadership is DESPERATELY needed. People who are smart enough to understand the world around them and angry and principled enough to actually challenge something, instead of playing charming games of rollover.

I'm writing this on a libertarian site. That's how pathetic and lost the left is today. Makes me sick. Defending Frum? Who will they be defending next, Rove?

Good stuff man! The paradigm is now "freedom lovers" v. "freedom haters." This republican v. democrat, liberal v. conservative stuff is old news and no longer applies. Those who love freedom, this side of the line! That's how we need to delineate our polictical viewpoints from now on. It is quite a bit more descriptive.

One thing that I find astounding is that when a dullard like WIlliam Buckley said that "We have got to accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores", nobody pointed out that effectively he was calling for the implementation of the type of government that the Cold War was supposed to be PREVENTING.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not an idiot: I realise that the Communist Threat was the political-parasite class' justification for its rapine – as Hayek wrote in the 1920s, communism of the Marxist-Leninist variety was doomed to fail through its own internal contradictions, so there was never any justification for spending trillions of dollars to fight an enemy that was dying inside.

Still, that soi-disant geniuses like Buckley (and their descendants – Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Frum and co… folks who call each other genius when it's clear they're numb-nutses) were a party to the entire load of crap, is a reason why their graves should be dug up and their corpses fed to pigs, in order to salvage SOME small benefit from their molecules. These vermin are responsible in part for the deaths of MILLIONS of broan and yeller people, for no crime other than a curiosity on the part of their political machinery, to check out whether public ownership of the means of production is a better way to rape the polity.

And less than a generation after the collapse of teh Soviet Union, there is scarce a major indusrtry (banks, motor car makers, and so forth) in the US that is NOT centrally planned… and everything stems from centrally-planned monetary policy and 'law'. And with all centrally planned government instituted monopoly, you get a lower quality of output, which is more expensive.

David Frum certainly has a genius for self promotion but I don't think Democrats or liberals or "the left" is embracing him. The Republicans have been so clownish lately – Sarah Palinmania especially. Frum looks good next to that but thats not saying much.

Gosh I'm sure poor little David Frum will be out of work indefinitely now. I hope he doesn't have his car repossessed and his mortgage foreclosed. Oh wait, that's just for the average schmucks, that's right. I expect he'll be parking his posterior in some DC neo-lib dungeon next. No doubt struggling to get by on a 6 figure income.

An amusing little aside on Frum. When students rioted in Greece some time ago after one of their number was killed by police, Frum opined in his NRO column that that looked like a good opportunity to destroy the euro. At the time, I found the remark absurd. What did rioting students have to do with the euro? Now I understand what he meant: a background of domestic dissent that could be manipulated into an anti-EU and anti-euro campaign. The Jews, as Napoleon said of the French arsitocracy, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing!

Or making Valerie Plame into a heroine for being an outed CIA agent. The left used to make heroes out of people who outed secret government agents. But during W. time most of the left was screaming for Rove's head over Valerie Plame. There are plenty of reasons to not like Rove, but helping out a CIA agent isn't one of them.

Anyway, most people into politics aren't principled at all. Take, say, back in '92 the left's defense of Clinton's draft dodging ways. By '04 they were hailing Kerry for going to Vietnam and trashing W. for not going. Quite frankly, I don't care what W. did to get out of going to Vietnam. If Vietnam was the sole issue of the '04 presidential campaign, then I would vote for W. over Kerry. Anybody opposed in principle to what the U.S. was doing in Indochina back in the late 60's and early 70's would be appalled at Kerry's acceptance of any military "honor" from a war criminal like Nixon.

The Neocon/Neolib alliance behind state corporatism and Empire is a fundamental fact of life. However, part of its political power is that it has absorbed so many different ideological and interest group elements into its belly, that it can show different faces to different segments of the population, creating separate impressions for both nominal conservatives and nominal liberals that the face they see is serving their cause. The reality is that this Imperial American Corporate State Cthulhu serves nothing but itself.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].